With regards to Richard’s piece on ‘slope‘ and the comments about it:

I was thinking about the time I spend with the youth of our local church. Am I:
1. Running a group with the agenda of communicating Christ to them
OR
2. Running a group with the sole agenda of enabling them to be a group and have their own agenda’s, and just being Christ to them.

Certainly the pressure is on me (from tradition) to do (1) and sure I hope that I do communicate Christ to them, but is that my agenda?

Hmmm, is there a condition that I attach to attendance that they must allow me to control a certain amount of the time we spend together? If so, do they come in spite of that? If so, is that a positive thing?

Would it be better to relinquish any attempt to control and just to be there on their terms?

Whilst I’m tending toward the idea of a lack of control I’m not sure that this is a lack of slope. Surely if I practise ‘being Christ to people’ then I am always a slope, always a way in?

But this is slope without hidden agenda, without control, without events – just me being the new me.

Hmmm…